A University faces a crisis of confidence amongst the working class

Americans are increasingly losing faith in higher education. Republicans see universities as out of touch, pushing a liberal agenda on their students. Democrats see them as too expensive. Increasingly, the working class sees higher education as not worth the cost — despite the fact that a growing share of jobs require a postsecondary degree.

Today’s University of Michigan includes more than its share of blue bloods and people with inherited wealth. Like many other flagship state universities that were founded to provide a leg up for the common man, Michigan has become a school largely for students with means. A full 10 percent of its student body comes from families in the top 1 percent of earners, according to data from the Equality of Opportunity Project. Just 16 percent come from families in the bottom 60 percent of earners combined. The median income of parents of students at the university is $156,000, roughly three times the median income of Michigan families.

There’s a sense that working-class students don’t belong there.

Indeed, many flagship state universities like Michigan have, despite their public missions, come to operate more like elite private universities, closer in spirit to the Ivy League than the desire for equal opportunity that helped create them. It’s a trend that’s brought increased selectivity but also a crisis of affordability and deep alienation from lower-income communities in the states they’re supposed to serve. Since the late 1990s, nearly two-thirds of public universities increased the share of students in the top 20 percent and reduced the share from the bottom 40 percent.

“We are shutting the doors of higher education — of public higher education — to low-income students,” said Stephen Burd, who led the New America analysis. “That’s incredibly distressing considering public higher education is supposed to be the cheaper option that common people — real people — could go to. Now you see these public colleges are acting just like the private colleges. It’s kind of scary in terms of what this means for opportunity in this country.”

This is what happens when you cut public funding for public universities. They have no choice then but to seek private sector funding via tuition increases, and working class people simply can't afford to compete with the 1 Percenters. Most of them are struggling just to get their basic living expenses paid from one month to the next.

Americans are increasingly losing faith in higher education. Republicans see universities as out of touch, pushing a liberal agenda on their students. Democrats see them as too expensive. Increasingly, the working class sees higher education as not worth the cost — despite the fact that a growing share of jobs require a postsecondary degree.

Today’s University of Michigan includes more than its share of blue bloods and people with inherited wealth. Like many other flagship state universities that were founded to provide a leg up for the common man, Michigan has become a school largely for students with means. A full 10 percent of its student body comes from families in the top 1 percent of earners, according to data from the Equality of Opportunity Project. Just 16 percent come from families in the bottom 60 percent of earners combined. The median income of parents of students at the university is $156,000, roughly three times the median income of Michigan families.

There’s a sense that working-class students don’t belong there.

Indeed, many flagship state universities like Michigan have, despite their public missions, come to operate more like elite private universities, closer in spirit to the Ivy League than the desire for equal opportunity that helped create them. It’s a trend that’s brought increased selectivity but also a crisis of affordability and deep alienation from lower-income communities in the states they’re supposed to serve. Since the late 1990s, nearly two-thirds of public universities increased the share of students in the top 20 percent and reduced the share from the bottom 40 percent.

“We are shutting the doors of higher education — of public higher education — to low-income students,” said Stephen Burd, who led the New America analysis. “That’s incredibly distressing considering public higher education is supposed to be the cheaper option that common people — real people — could go to. Now you see these public colleges are acting just like the private colleges. It’s kind of scary in terms of what this means for opportunity in this country.”

This is what happens when you cut public funding for public universities. They have no choice then but to seek private sector funding via tuition increases, and working class people simply can't afford to compete with the 1 Percenters. Most of them are struggling just to get their basic living expenses paid from one month to the next.

The "problem" is the growing "classism" of America's elite. They see the white working class as "the problem."

Meh. They always have. Of course, workers used to have significant legal protections that prevented them from being abused by their employers. The GOP has been very successful since back in the 1960s in getting rid of those pesky worker's rights. They just weren't good for bidness.

You thought white kids would still get in free after the funding was cut?

Really?

I'd hope the college admissions would be less racist, or classist, than they are. This article is about "elite" schools and their affirmative action policies which tend to skew against poor whites and asians. It dovetails quite nicely with Basijima's article about how state universities are tending to become more like the "elite" schools.

In doing so they are also becoming more "classist" or should I say just plain ol' racist against "specific demographics."

From my link. {the article you didn't read}

...Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class “white ethnics,” social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice “diversity” on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the “underrepresented” racial minority groups...

I'd hope the college admissions would be less racist, or classist, than they are. This article is about "elite" schools and their affirmative action policies which tend to skew against poor whites and asians. It dovetails quite nicely with Basijima's article about how state universities are tending to become more like the "elite" schools.

In doing so they are also becoming more "classist" or should I say just plain ol' racist against "specific demographics."

From my link. {the article you didn't read}

...Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class “white ethnics,” social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice “diversity” on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the “underrepresented” racial minority groups...

Meh. They always have. Of course, workers used to have significant legal protections that prevented them from being abused by their employers. The GOP has been very successful since back in the 1960s in getting rid of those pesky worker's rights. They just weren't good for bidness.

You're living decades in the past. There is a political realignment occurring even as we speak.

Right now the Democratic Party is jettisoning the unions in favor of open borders and "free" markets. The future of the Democratic Party is in coastal enclaves with a cosmopolitan "read that very wealthy white upper class" and a semi permanent underclass made up largely of minorities and foreign nationals. Think California as the prototypical Democratic dream nation of tomorrow.

Face it, as of right now the Republicans are the party of the, whats left of them anyway, working class.

You're living decades in the past. There is a political realignment occurring even as we speak. Right now the Democratic Party is jettisoning the unions in favor of open borders and "free" markets. The future of the Democratic Party is in coastal enclaves with a cosmopolitan "read that very wealthy white upper class" and a semi permanent underclass made up largely of minorities and foreign nationals. Think California as the prototypical Democratic nation of tomorrow.

Face it, as of right now the Republicans are the party of the, whats left of them anyway, working class.